The people
of Ladakh, by and large, exhibit a natural joie-de-vivre, which
is given free rein by the region’s ancient traditions. Socio-religious
festivals, including the annual festivals held in the monasteries,
provide the excuse for convivial gatherings. Archery is
a pastime for all in summer. Among
the Buddhists this sport often takes the form of open-air parties
accompanied by dance and song. The game of polo is yet
nother proud element of the popular culture.
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A
Drokpa cultural troupe
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Archery
and Polo
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Archery
dance
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Archery
is an ancestral sport of Ladakh, which is part of the culture.
In Leh and its surrounding villages, archery festivals are held
during the summer months, with a lot of fun and fanfare. They
are competitive events, to which all the surrounding villages
send their teams. The sport itself is conducted with strict etiquette,
to the accompaniment of the music of surna and
daman (oboe and drum). As important as the sport itself
are the interludes of dancing and other entertainment. Chang,
the local barley beer, flows freely, but there is rarely any
rowdiness. The crowds attend in their Sunday best, the men invariably
in traditional dress and the women wearing their brightest brocade
mantles and their heaviest jewellery. Archery may be the pretext
for the gathering, but partying is the thing. In Kargil area,
on the other hand, the archery competitions are more serious and
bereft of the dancing and music, and these are held in early spring,
at the time of the thawing of the winter snow and frost.
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A Polo match
at Leh
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Polo,
the other traditional sport of Ladakh is indigenous to the western
Himalayas, especially to Baltistan and Gilgit. It was probably introduced
into Ladakh in the mid-17th century by King Singge Namgyal, whose
mother was a Balti princess. The game played here differs in many
respects from the international game, which is adapted from what British
travellers saw in the western Himalayas and Manipur in the 19th century.
Each team consists of six players, and the game lasts for an hour
with a ten-minute break. Altitude notwithstanding, the hardy local
ponies - the best of which come from Zanskar – scarcely seem to suffer,
though play can be fast and furious. Each goal is greeted by a burst
of music from surna and daman, and the players often
show extraordinary skill. Unlike the international game, polo in Ladakh
is not exclusively for the rich.
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Polo
match on the eve of Ladakh festival
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Traditionally,
almost every major village had its polo-ground, and even today it
is played with verve in many places besides Leh, especially in Dras
and Chushot near Leh. In Leh town itself, it has been
partly institutionalised with regular tournaments and occasional exhibition
matches being played on the polo-ground. The local crowd takes a keen
interest, especially in those matches in which a civilian team takes
on that of the army. Altogether, polo adds a unique kind of colour
and excitement to the summer in Leh.
Arts
and Crafts
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A Brass Kettle
from Ladakh
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The
tradition of artistic craftsmanship in Ladakh is not as well developed
as in neighbouring Kashmir, and most of the luxury articles are
obtained through imports. The exception is the village of Chiling,
about 19 km up the Zanskar River from Nimo, where a community
of metal workers carry on their ancestral profession, working
with silver, brass and copper. These are said to be the descendants
of artisans brought from Nepal during the mid-17th century to
build one of the gigantic Buddha - images at Shey. They produce
exquisite items for domestic and religious use, such as tea and
chang pots, teacup-stands and lids, hookah-bases,
ladles, bowls and occasionally, silver chortens for temples
and domestic shrines.
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Frescoes inside
a monastery
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Items
of everyday use such as cooking pots and bowls, as well as agricultural
implements are supplied by local blacksmiths (gara). They
also make the large and ornate iron stoves seen in kitchens of
the Ladakhi homes. Craftsmanship in general has not developed beyond
the production of everyday items for domestic use. Pattu,
the rough, warm, woollen material used for clothing is made from
locally produced wool, spun by women on drop-spindles, and woven by
traditional weavers on portable looms that are set up in the winter
sunshine or under the shade of a tree in summer. Baskets, for the
transport of any kind of burden, are woven out of willow twigs or
a particular variety of grass. Woodwork is confined largely to the
production of pillars and carved lintels for the houses and the low
carved tables or Chog-tse that are a feature of every
Ladakhi living room.
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A Carpet weaver
in actions
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Many such
items, including newly introduced varieties, are available in the
Government Handicrafts Centre at Leh. There
you can find, in addition to traditional objects, a few special items
like pure pashmina shawls, rough compared with those
produced in Srinagar, and carpets with Tibetan designs. Similar carpets
can also be purchased at the Tibetan Refugee Centre,
Choglamsar. The Handicrafts Centre also has a department of
thangka painting. These icons on cloth are executed
in accordance with strict traditional guidelines handed down the generations.
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A
Thangka painting
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In the
same tradition are the mural paintings in the monasteries, where
semi-professionals, both monks and laymen, toil to keep the walls
decorated with images symbolising various aspects of Buddhism. The
skill of building religious statues is also not extinct. The gigantic
image of Maitreya Buddha was installed in Thiksey
Gompa as recently as the early 1980s.
Oracles
and Astrologers
The
people of Ladakh, particularly the Buddhists, believe implicitly
in the influence of gods and spirits on the material world, and
undertake no major activity without taking this influence into
consideration. The lamas are the vital intermediaries between
the human and the spirit worlds. Not only do they perform the
rites necessary to propitiate the gods, but they also take on
the role of astrologers and oracles who can predict auspicious
time for starting any work, whether ploughing the fields, or taking
in the harvest, arranging a marriage or going on a journey.
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The
Stok Oracle
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The most
famous monk-oracles are those of Matho Gompa.
Chosen every three years by a traditional procedure, two monks spend
several months in a rigorous regimen of prayer and fasting to prepare
and purify themselves for their difficult role. When the time comes
they are possessed by the deity known as Rong-tsan,
whose spirit enables them to perform feats that would be impossible
to anyone in a normal state such as cutting themselves with knives,
or sprinting along the Gompa's topmost parapet. In this condition,
they will answer questions concerning individual problems and public
welfare. However, the spirit is said to be able to detect questions
asked by skeptical
observers for testing him, to which they react with frenzied anger.
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The
Matho Oracle
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In some
villages there are also lay people who have special powers as oracles
and healers. Some of them belong to families in which there have been
several such recipients of spirit forces, while others do not have
any such hereditary background. The spirits possessing these laypersons
are believed to be unpredictable, and not always entirely benevolent,
and some people resist being possessed by them. However, once they
have accepted, they undergo a process of initiation and training by
monks and senior oracles before they are able to start practising.